Joaquin José Diez, Daniel Eduardo Vigo, Daniel Pedro Cardinali and Daniel Pérez-Chada
Driving needs high levels of alertness. Increased somnolence is the most important negative influence to maintain proper watchfulness and vigilance. Drowsiness, working conditions…
Abstract
Purpose
Driving needs high levels of alertness. Increased somnolence is the most important negative influence to maintain proper watchfulness and vigilance. Drowsiness, working conditions and their affective impact must be taken into account to determine driving safety. The purpose of this paper is to assess excessive daytime sleepiness, sleep habits, quality of sleep, stress-related symptoms, and working conditions in a large sample of short-distance bus drivers in the city of Buenos Aires.
Design/methodology/approach
This was a cross-sectional study performed to evaluate sleep habits and obstructive apnea risk in short-distance bus drivers of the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Questionnaires regarding anthropometric data, sleep habits, snoring, daytime sleepiness (Epworth Sleepiness Scale), quality of sleep (Pittsburgh Quality of Sleep Index, PQSI), working conditions and fatigue and anxiety related to work were administered to professional short-distance bus drivers (n=1023).
Findings
A prevalence of 34.6 percent of obesity and 80 percent of snoring was observed. Mean sleep time during workdays was 6.5±0.1 h and bad sleep quality was reported by 54.6 percent of the subjects. Excessive daytime sleepiness had a prevalence of 48.8 percent and was independently associated with reduced sleep time, increased sleep debt, long time to wake up, snoring, and short resting time along the working day (p<0.05).
Originality/value
Short-distance drivers in Buenos Aires, the largest urban area of Argentina, are a partially sleep-deprived, overweighted population, showing a high daytime somnolence, poor work-rest conditions and high levels of anxiety and fatigue. This association can be very harmful in view of the demanding working conditions considered.
Details
Keywords
The national immigrant rights campaign of 2006 stands as one of the largest mobilizations by people of color in US history, yet less scholarly attention has been given to…
Abstract
The national immigrant rights campaign of 2006 stands as one of the largest mobilizations by people of color in US history, yet less scholarly attention has been given to systematically comparing these mobilizations at the local level. To develop an understanding of what led to sustained mobilization, a comparative case study analysis of seven cities in California's San Joaquin Valley is employed. The empirical evidence is based on interviews with key organizers and participants, newspaper documentation of protest events, census data, and other secondary sources. I find that the presence and size of policy threats explained the initial protest during the spring of 2006 in all localities, but cities with elaborate resource infrastructures (preexisting organizations, histories of community organizing, and coalitions) had more enduring levels of collective action.
Details
Keywords
Die Frage «Wie weit kann die öffentliche Hand den Fremdenverkehr fördern?» unterstellt bereits die vollzogene Tatsache der staatlichen Förderung des Fremdenverkehrs. Sie scheint…
Abstract
Die Frage «Wie weit kann die öffentliche Hand den Fremdenverkehr fördern?» unterstellt bereits die vollzogene Tatsache der staatlichen Förderung des Fremdenverkehrs. Sie scheint diese hinzunehmen, ja sogar davon auszugehen, dass der Staat den Fremdenverkehr fördern soll, vielleicht sogar muss, wobei es dann, nur noch einen Schritt bis zur Untersuchung und zum Entscheid darüber bedeuten würde, wie weit er iiberhaupt zu gehen imstande ist, um das apodiktisch feststehende Gebot der staatlichen Unterstüzung maximal zu erfüllen.
– The purpose of this paper is to analyze the circumstances that have conditioned the development of education in Spain from the enlightenment to the present day.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the circumstances that have conditioned the development of education in Spain from the enlightenment to the present day.
Design/methodology/approach
Multidisciplinary scientific approach that combines the interpretation of the legal texts with the revision of the doctrinal and theoretical contributions made on the issue.
Findings
From the beginning of the nineteenth century, the history of education in Spain has been marked by constant fluctuations between the reactionary instincts, principally maintained by the Catholic Church and the conservative social classes, and the progressive experiments, driven by the enlightened and the liberals first, and the republicans and the socialists later. As a consequence of that, the fight for finishing with illiteracy and guaranteeing universal schooling underwent permanent advances and retreats, preventing from an effective modernization of the Spanish educative system. On the one hand, renewal projects promoted by teachers and pedagogues were inevitably criticized by the ecclesiastical hierarchy, obsessed with the idea of preserving the influence of religion on the schools. On the other hand, successive governments were weak in implementing an educational policy which could place Spain at the level of the other European and occidental nations.
Originality/value
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, although the country has overcome a good part of its centuries-old backwardness, increasing economic difficulties and old ideological splits keep hampering the quality of teaching, gripped by neoliberal policies which undermine the right to education for all. The reading of this paper offers various historical clues to understand this process.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the literacy practices of the families and communities of first-generation college students in Latin America, and how community and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the literacy practices of the families and communities of first-generation college students in Latin America, and how community and family literacies can inform the understanding of first-generation college students’ identity and cultural values.
Design/methodology/approach
This transnational ethnography was conducted in local communities around three public universities in Mexico, Colombia and Costa Rica. Participants included nine fist-generation college students and more than 50 people in their families and communities (i.e. relatives, parents and friends). Data gathering occurred at the university outside the formal space of the classroom, at home, and in the community. Data were interpreted through the lens of the community cultural wealth framework.
Findings
The author found that first-generation college students and their families and communities engaged in rich literacy practices that have been overlooked in policy, research, and media. It is argued that the concept literacy capital is necessary to acknowledge the critical literacy practices communities engage in. Literacy capital was manifested in these communities to preserve cultural traditions, to sponsor literacy practices and to question and resist unjust sociopolitical circumstances.
Practical implications
The findings of this study should inform a culturally sustaining pedagogy of academic literacies in higher education. Beyond asset-based approaches to academic literacies in Latin America, critical perspectives to academic literacies teaching and learning are needed that acknowledge the Latin American complexities.
Originality/value
These findings are significant because they unveiled how people in local communities were informed about the sociopolitical dynamics at the national and international scale that affected or even threatened their local culture, and how they used their literacy capital to react critically to those situations.
Details
Keywords
This article focuses on the study of the shaping of pedagogy as a discipline in Spain prior to the Civil War. Its aim is to identify those elements that helped pedagogy become…
Abstract
Purpose
This article focuses on the study of the shaping of pedagogy as a discipline in Spain prior to the Civil War. Its aim is to identify those elements that helped pedagogy become constituted as a distinct field of knowledge that could offer rigorous insight into the world of education.
Design/methodology/approach
The article uses the framework proposed by Rita Hofstetter and Bernard Schneuwly for the shaping of a disciplinary field. Finally, it briefly examines the process of professionalization, using the approach advocated by the sociologist Elliott Freidson.
Findings
The analysis carried out concludes that at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936 the process of professionalization and consolidation of pedagogy as a discipline had been completed in Spain.
Originality/value
The article presents the originality of reinterpreting the elements offered by Spanish history of education in the light of an international theoretical framework. This allows a new understanding of the process of constitution of pedagogy as a disciplinary field while offering the international public a case study according to international standards.
Details
Keywords
Mariano González-Delgado, Manuel Ferraz-Lorenzo and Cristian Machado-Trujillo
After World War II, an educational modernization process gained ground worldwide. International organizations such as UNESCO began to play a key role in the creation, development…
Abstract
Purpose
After World War II, an educational modernization process gained ground worldwide. International organizations such as UNESCO began to play a key role in the creation, development and dissemination of a new educational vision in different countries. This article examines the origin and development of this modernization process under the dictatorship of Franco. More specifically, we will show how the adoption of this conception in Spain must be understood from the perspective of the interaction between UNESCO and Franco's regime, and how the policies of the dictatorship converged with the proposals suggested by this international organization. Our principal argument is that the educational policies carried out in Spain throughout the second half of the 20th century can be better understood when inserted into a transnational perspective in education.
Design/methodology/approach
This article uses documents from archives that until now were unpublished or scarcely known. We have also analyzed materials published in the preeminent educational journals of the dictatorship, such as the Revista de Educación, Revista Española de Pedagogía, Bordón and Vida escolar, as well as documents published by the Spanish Ministry of National Education.
Findings
Franco's dictatorship built an educational narrative closely aligned with proposals put forward by UNESCO on educational planning after World War II. The educational policies created by the dictatorship were related to the new ideas that strove to link the educational system with economic and social development.
Originality/value
This article is inspired by a transnational history of education perspective. On the one hand, it traces the origins of educational modernization under Franco's regime, which represented a technocratic vision of education that is best understood as a result of the impact that international organizations had in the second half of the 20th century. On the other hand, it follows the intensifying relationship between the dictatorship and the educational ideas launched by UNESCO. Both aspects are little known and studied in Spain.
Details
Keywords
Carmen Guzmán‐Alfonso and Joaquín Guzmán‐Cuevas
The aim of this research is to determine whether entrepreneurial intention models explain the entrepreneurial behaviour of individuals regarding venture creation in Latin America…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this research is to determine whether entrepreneurial intention models explain the entrepreneurial behaviour of individuals regarding venture creation in Latin America, as well as to test if the three factors usually taken into consideration in these models (attitudes, perceived social value, and perceived self‐efficacy, as defined by Ajzen) really determine entrepreneurial intentions in this part of the world.
Design/methodology/approach
By using panel data from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Global Report for the years 2008, 2009 and 2010, referring to Latin America, the paper employs two linear regression models to examine determinants of entrepreneurial intentions in Latin America and the role of the entrepreneurial intentions in the entrepreneurial initiative.
Findings
According to the results obtained, it can be stated that, also for the case of Latin America, entrepreneurial intentions are once more confirmed as a previous step of entrepreneurial behaviour with regard to venture creation. However, even though the three variables taken into consideration are significant as determinants of entrepreneurial intentions, evidence suggests a negative relationship between the perception of social value about entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial intention, which contradicts the previous literature review. A further investigation regarding this result is planned for the near future.
Originality/value
The originality of this research arises from bringing together in a model three of the main elements in the research field of entrepreneurship – entrepreneurial intention models, global entrepreneurship monitor and Latin America (one of the most important places where the entrepreneurship phenomenon takes place).